In this episode, Ray Ortlund talks through what it means when God says he dwells not only in the high and holy place but also way down low with those at rock bottom. Ray shares how even in betrayal, loneliness, feeling trapped in sin, or death, God is waiting there with open arms.
Matt Tully
Ray, thanks so much for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.
Ray Ortlund
Thank you, Matt. It’s a privilege to be with you.
Matt Tully
Ray, you write in this new book that you’ve written, a book that, as the title suggests, is trying to meet people when they’re at their lowest, when their life has taken a turn that has maybe caught them by surprise and they just feel like they are at their wits end. And you write in the book that there are many ways for us in our lives to actually hit rock bottom. And I wonder if you could just start us off by telling us what that was like for you. Have you ever hit rock bottom? What did that look like?
Ray Ortlund
I think it’s inevitable. Sooner or later, something really bad comes and finds us. For me, it’s hard to talk about it, Matt, because it remains unresolved, and it’s still heartbreaking, and I don’t want to embarrass anybody. But I was among people who made promises and didn’t keep their promises. So I put my trust in their pledges and assurances. I think I should have done that, as I stand before the Lord, but they didn’t keep their end of the bargain, and it all fell apart, and it was very costly. And it shook me to my core. My parents and my Sunday school teachers and so forth, from the beginning of my life, taught me God loves you. And what then happened in that unfortunate experience was done in the name of Christ. So I actually had the terrifying thought, Have I been wrong all these years? Maybe the truth of my existence is that God hates my guts. That would explain everything. It would make sense. Now, I figured out soon enough that I was right the first time. God does love me. But then I had to go back and rebuild everything from the very deepest foundations. I couldn’t go back to my Christianity, as I had navigated it and understood it prior to that heartache, and just sort of tweak that, upgrade that, improve that. It was too shocking. It was too devastating. I had to rethink from the very deepest foundations. And that was a major turnaround in my life. It was the beginning of my real ministry and the beginning of a profound happiness that I didn’t experience prior to that. So I am living proof, Matt, that the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever.
Matt Tully
It is just amazing. You hear anyone who’s been through profound suffering of some kind will kind of say the same thing, that there’s this clarity that can come. There’s a focus and even a recognition that things that maybe you thought were okay, things that seemed fine or healthy, maybe weren’t as healthy as you once believed they were. Why is it that suffering and pain—whether it’s the pain of betrayal, like maybe what you were talking about, or sickness, or some other just hardship that comes at us—why does that tend to have such a clarifying power in our lives?
Ray Ortlund
That’s a profound question, Matt. I wish I had a better answer for you, but let me just take a stab at it. I think we launch into life with the assumption that what we’re going to do is accumulate more and more. And I don’t mean just money and wealth and things, but we’re going to, as we go through life, accumulate more credibility and more assurance and more confidence and more skills and so forth. And we don’t realize that we don’t really get traction for the great things in life by gaining more and more, but we get traction by losing more and more. And we don’t go there until we’re forced to by circumstances, when we’re forced into shedding assumptions, beliefs, expectations, and so forth that have just seemed obvious our whole lives. When we finally let go of that and lose it, then we have that significant aha moment when the living Christ becomes more real—existentially real—than ever before. And that really is the point. It’s not a philosophical question. It’s not even a psychological question. It’s a matter of suffering the loss of all things that I may gain Christ (Phil. 3).
Matt Tully
You write in the book that there’s no rock bottom that’s too deep for Jesus. And that’s the main message, essentially, of the book is (spoiler alert) Jesus is there when we hit rock bottom, and that’s where he does his best work for us. But I could imagine somebody listening to that comment, listening to what you’ve said even thus far, and to those of us who have been Christians for a long time, who have been in the church maybe all our lives, who have walked with the Lord, a statement like that can just kind of sound a little trite. It can sound a little cliched. Of course Jesus meets us there. We’ve heard that. And it can be, if we’re honest with ourselves, it can be something that in the abstract doesn’t maybe sound all that comforting. It doesn’t seem that out of the ordinary. It just seems familiar. So, again, is that something that you would you say you’ve come to understand in a deeper way? You always would have said that Christ meets us in our lowest points, but is there something about going through it that you think has helped you to see that more clearly or more vibrantly?
Ray Ortlund
Didn’t C. S. Lewis say that pain is God’s megaphone to a deaf world? That’s true for me, Matt. I have loved the Lord as long as I can remember. That’s a huge blessing. I am not disparaging that at all. I’m not taking anything away from his care for me all those many years growing up. But the other night, Jani and I were watching Father of the Bride. Do you know that movie?
Matt Tully
Oh yeah. Classic.
Ray Ortlund
The home where that movie is filmed was my neighborhood in California. That home was about three blocks away from our place, and so the street that you see there, I walked that street every day to school. I grew up in that world in a healthy family and a healthy church. I just thought this is normal, average reality for everybody. I had no idea. Now, again, I am so grateful to God for every way he blessed me all those years. But I was just saying to a friend this morning at breakfast that for me, personally, for far too long as a pastor, I didn’t really understand what people were lugging into church every Sunday. The questions, the fears, the regrets, the heartache, and so forth. And I am so grateful that I hit rock bottom. I finally began to understand what 99 percent of the human race is experiencing at this moment right now. And they’re entered into my heart this fierce sense of care for them, respect for them. I want to protect them. I want to provide a safe place for them to come in, take a deep breath, discover hope, rethink life, and so forth. I’m very earnest that they will not be mistreated. And so in Nashville at Emanuel Church, we used to have what we called the Emanuel mantra. We wanted to communicate that this is a church anybody can come to, and this is a Christian church for people who stink at Christianity. And we called it the Emanuel mantra. It was very simple: One, I’m a complete idiot. Two, my future is incredibly bright. Three, anybody can get in on this. I used to say that from the front, because I wanted to communicate to people who are just barely able to crawl into church, “You don’t have to serve. You don’t have to donate. If all you can do is just come and sit and heal, you’re so welcome here.” That, I think, is what this verse in Isaiah is talking about, that the High and Holy One dwells among the devastated, the crushed, the contrite, and the lowly.
Matt Tully
Let’s go there, Ray. Isaiah 57:15 is this verse. It’s a key verse for you and for this whole book. And I wonder if you can start off by reading it aloud for us, and then explain why you say it has these healing powers.
Ray Ortlund
In a way, this is the Christian gospel in one verse. It doesn’t explicitly mention the cross, but this is the hope and the good news of God’s grace for the undeserving in one verse. “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.’” So when we really need help, when life is not normal, when we are terrified, everything’s falling apart, where do go to find God? Well, that verse says God dwells, he lingers in, keeps an address at two places. One, way up high. It says, “I dwell in the high and holy place.” But we can’t go there. And he also dwells way down low among the lowly and the crushed and the contrite. So God dwells up in this heavenly place with angelic beings and also way down at the bottom of human society with devastated, terrified, exhausted people who are wondering if they even have a future anymore. And in between those two extremes—way up high, way down low—is a social space that I call the mushy middle. Now, the mushy middle is where the kids are above average, the career is on track, we have enough money to keep a lot of trouble out and a lot of comfort in, and “church” is a weekend option for upgrading our already pretty good life to an even better life. And the Jesus in that “church” is the chaplain to the mushy middle. And he never judges. He’s grateful to have our attention for a whole hour on a Sunday morning. He never disagrees with us, and he’s just there for us. You know what I mean? Now, there’s a lot of so-called Christianity like that. Some churches cater to the mushy middle. The problem is that it’s just harder to find the Lord there. Now, God is present everywhere, but he’s not present in the same way everywhere. And when he says in Isaiah 57:15, “I dwell in the high and holy place, and I dwell down among the crushed and lowly,” that means he manifests and reveals himself, gives himself, moves close in those two places—way up high and way down low. So that’s where we go to find God.
Matt Tully
What are some of the other warning signs? If someone’s listening right now and they don’t want to be in the mushy middle, they don’t want to be content with a passive, a little bit distant, uninterested kind of relationship with God, what are some of the warning signs that they should be looking at in their own life to assess, “Am I comfortable in this kind of Christianity?”
Ray Ortlund
One indicator would be how do I perceive people who are devastated? Do I look at them with disdain? Do I look at them and think, Well, I may not be perfect, but I’ve never sunk that low. If I regard people who are struggling and suffering as beneath me, well, Jesus told the parable about the two men who went up to the temple to pray. And one, he says, stood there and said, “God, I thank you. I do all these good things, and I’m not like that guy over there.” Now, this man, the Pharisee, was Reformed. He said, “God, I thank you. I give you all the glory that I’m superior.” And the other man just basically crawled in on his hands and knees and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” And Jesus said that man went home justified. The parable begins, “And Jesus told this parable to those who trusted in themselves that they are righteous and despised others.” Those two always go together—one’s own complacency and self-admiration with disparaging others. So perceiving others in a condescending manner, looking down on them—that’s a pretty serious indicator I might be stuck in the mushy middle.
Matt Tully
I think this is a helpful nuance to what you’re saying, because I think someone could hear what you’ve said about the mushy middle and think, Well, does that just mean if there are good things going in my life, if my life isn’t in crisis right now, does that mean I’m necessarily there? But it seems like the real emphasis here is even how we perceive ourselves and how we perceive God and our need for God. Do we see him as kind of an optional add-on, or do we see that every day I desperately need his grace in my life?
Ray Ortlund
Yes. Thank you, Matt. That’s a great point. The Lord is so kind to us. He gives so many good gifts. Right now I’m doing some work in Ecclesiastes, and I’m really struck at how often Solomon uses the word “give” when he describes what God does. God gives joy. God gives work. We’re just being showered with his good gifts every day, and we praise and thank his holy name for every single one. And what if life were endless crisis and intensity? It would be unsustainable. It would crush us. I’m just saying, inevitably, there comes a time when everything falls apart and we have to rethink everything. And what I’m saying is that’s not a catastrophe, that’s not actually a disaster. That’s a breakthrough, by God’s grace. And that’s when he becomes more real than ever before. And even as we sort of recover and he graciously puts his hand under our chin up above the surface of the water, we begin to breathe again and we begin to hope again. We take with us, from then on, a more vivid heart awareness of his nearness, his care, his gentleness, his humility, his sensitivity, his thoughtfulness, his patience. Matt, Jani and I spent a day with David Powlison, the biblical counselor—what a dear, precious man he was—back in Philadelphia, right in the middle of our rock bottom. And it was just a great day. And several years later, I saw David at an event and he said, “Ray, how are you doing with all that?” And I said, “David, I’m embarrassed to admit to you how much it still bothers me and kind of eats at me.” And he said, “Ray, God is patient.” Oh, those three words! God is patient. Matt, he’s not looking at you and me with a stopwatch in his hand. Click. “Okay, come on. Let’s see some progress here. What are you waiting for?” It’s not like that. Where would we be without the patience of God? I don’t change quickly. I don’t change easily. But God is patient, and when we go to that place of deep sorrow and loss and heartache, he’s not only there; he’s there with open arms.
Matt Tully
Ray, you mentioned your story of rock bottom, which is maybe in the broad category of betrayal. And that’s one of the categories that you address in the book. You hit on a few other ways that we can sometimes hit rock bottom. I wonder if you could just walk us through those. The next one that you highlight is when we feel trapped by our sin. Speak a little bit to the ways that God can use those feelings to make himself real to us.
Ray Ortlund
I forget which of our Puritan fathers it was, but he said it so well. “Satan shows the bait, but he hides the hook.” And we all know exactly what he’s talking about. We fall for a temptation, we’re restless—Following Jesus is so confining. Why can’t I think for myself? Why can’t I explore my options? And then we go do something really reckless. And then we find it gets its hooks into us. It’s easy to get in and hard to get out. Every single one of us understands that. Jesus said, “He who sins is a slave to sin.” It gets a power over us and inevitably, we go there. When we’re the ones who do the betraying, well, thank God for brick walls that we run into, where we finally have to face ourselves and own up and just fall before the Lord—and perhaps others—and confess our sins. James 5:16: “Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.” The Roman Catholic Church has confession as an ordinance in the formal structures of their ministry. I think James 5:16 is talking about something far more profound, but we Protestants, to whom do we confess our sins? And it says confess your sins to one another. So this is mutual. There’s a transparency in real Christianity. And then it says, “Pray for one another that you may be healed.” That’s where healing is found. When we’re trapped in our own sins, confession and prayer with Christian brothers and sisters, as is appropriate, however that might be appropriate in any given relationship.
Matt Tully
I know that’s something that you and your church have done for a long time very intentionally, but you’re right, it’s something that sounds good in theory, but we struggle to actually do that in our lives. Another one of the categories of hitting rock bottom that you address is loneliness. And loneliness is one of those struggles that just by definition, it’s something that we often struggle with alone. When we don’t have that community, that’s what it is. It’s the lack of true community. So how does God meet us if we’re feeling alone?
Ray Ortlund
Solitary confinement is the worst form of punishment. And it’s really, really hard to bear. So many people in our nation today say they have no friend. They’re lonely. Our relationships and community groups and institutions that used to bring us together when America was sort of a more traditional culture, they’ve broken down. And we’re all aware of it. We all suffer the effects. My dad used to say, and I love how he said this, he said, “Take a risk, and go give your heart away.” I would say to anyone who’s lonely, look around and ask yourself (you can pray about it as well, of course), Who do I respect? Who do I trust? And go have coffee with that person. Go stick your neck out. Open your heart and say, “You know, I would really like to go to a deeper place with some trusted friends. And I wonder if we could put together something that maybe we could try it for three months and see how it works. We could get together for coffee every other week or something like that, maybe read some Scripture. And I would love the privilege of becoming vulnerable and transparent with you. Do you want to think about that? Could we consider that?” Now, that’s a scary step to take. Okay, well, let’s take it. Let’s not let fear hold us back. In Hamlet, old Polonius says to his son, as I recall, about friends, “And those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried.” In other words, you’ve chosen them as friends, they’ve been tested, they’ve been found faithful. “And those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.” Okay, here’s a goal for every single one of us for the rest of our lives. We will stop losing friends. We will regain lost friends. We will make new friends, and there will be less loneliness in this world.
Matt Tully
A final category that you deal with, which is the ultimate enemy here that we all face at some point, is death itself. And I wonder if there’s someone even listening right now who is facing death, whether it’s their own death—they’ve just got some diagnosis or they have something that’s inevitably leading in a certain direction—or maybe they have a loved one that has recently passed away, and they’re just wrestling with the reality of death. It’s a reality that we so often push away from our consciousness until it becomes impossible to ignore. What does God say to us in the face of that death?
Ray Ortlund
Matt, that’s such a poignant question. Thank you for asking that. I read somewhere that back in the Victorian days of the nineteenth century, people talked frankly about death, but sex was the taboo subject. We have flipped that. We never stop talking about sex, but death, we have no idea. And then when we do go to a funeral, it’s not called a funeral. It’s called a celebration of life, and it’s sort of chipper and upbeat. Well, okay, I understand in a way what that’s about, but they’re going to call my funeral a funeral, Matt. I’m making sure of that.
Matt Tully
Why?
Ray Ortlund
A friend the other day called me a death non-avoidant person.
Matt Tully
That’s an interesting compliment, I guess.
Ray Ortlund
Yeah, I think it was meant to be, actually. Because, brother, if Christ is risen, and we’re following him into resurrection immortality, we can stop avoiding, fearing, ignoring death. We can look at it right in the face and say to death, “You sorry loser! You have no claim on me at all. You think you’re going to win? Well, I’m going to show you. I’m going to dance on your grave.” We should be cheerfully defiant of death. And I’m thinking of John 21, when Jesus speaks to Peter. Jesus describes to Peter how he’s going to die. I wish the Lord would do this for me. I would be very interested to know in advance. But he says that to him. This is in John chapter 21:9: “This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.” Now, here’s why I love that so much, and it’s true for every Christian, not just Peter. When Peter died, he didn’t just die; he glorified God. Matt, you and I, unless the Lord comes back first, there’s going to come a day when we die. We have a birthday, we have a death day. We know our birthday, we don’t know our death day, but God has that day circled on his calendar for me and for you and for everyone listening. And when that day comes and we can no longer care for ourselves, we can no longer breathe, and our body shuts down, in that moment, we will be glorifying God. How? Well, John, the author, says, “And after saying this, Jesus said to Peter, ‘Follow me.’” Now, I love the realization, Matt, that you and I don’t have to orchestrate how we die so that we make sure our death glorifies God. All we do is today, at this moment, follow Jesus. And then tomorrow, follow Jesus. And then the day after that, follow Jesus. He’ll take care of everything. He will lead us to a death that will glorify God. For example, and this is actually quite spectacular, my own dad. The man was a saint. He had pulmonary fibrosis. His lungs became hardened and sort of leathery, and they didn’t process oxygen well, so he often felt as though he was underwater, fighting for breath, especially if he exerted himself. And I don’t know how this happened, but one time mom found him on the floor of their home in California. He had collapsed, fighting for breath. Mom, of course, was so distressed. She was there with him. And between gulping down some air, dad said to my mom, “No, Anne, no. This is a gift. It’s a gift.” Dad trusted God and he followed Christ, even when Christ led him into pulmonary fibrosis. And he received it not as a curse but as a gift. And then the day he died, in 2007, the family gathered there at his bedside, they read Scripture, they sang hymns, dad gave a word of patriarchal blessing to the family, and died. Now, Matt, I don’t know if I’m going to have consciousness to speak to Jani and my children. Maybe I’ll die in a car accident. I don’t know. God decides that. But what we know from John 21 is that if we will follow Jesus, he will lead us not only into each day but to that final day. And however it goes down for me, however it goes down for you and every listener, a Christian following Jesus doesn’t just die, but glorifies God. In fact, back in I can’t remember which chapter it is—I think Deuteronomy 32—God says to Moses, “Moses, I want you to go up on that mountain there and die and be gathered to your people.” What a remarkable command. God’s going to give me that command someday, and you, and every listener. And that means that when you and I die, we will be obeying God. Our last moment in this mortal world will be a moment of wonderful obedience, faithfulness, consecration. And then God said to Moses, “Die and be gathered to your people.” The Apostle’s Creed refers to the communion of saints. Matt, you’ve got that picture of Martin Luther up behind you there in your study. And Matt, when you walk into heaven, it may well be that there you’ll be and you will see the Lord. Maybe he’ll be fifteen feet away, and he will look at you, and you will look at him, and he will smile at you. And he might give you a great big bear hug. He’ll say, “Welcome.” And then all these other people, the communion of saints, you’ll be gathered to your people. Martin Luther might come up with a great big, vigorous handshake and invite you into a conversation about justification by faith alone! It’s just going to be wonderful. And we’re one heartbeat away from that glorious eternal welcome.
Matt Tully
I love that at the end of that chapter on dying, you share a little anecdote from World War II, where a newspaper reporter asked C. S. Lewis what he would do if the German Luftwaffe dropped a bomb on him in England. And obviously, England knew what it was like to be bombed by Germany. London was bombed. And Lewis had this incredible little line in response. I wonder if you could tell us what he said.
Ray Ortlund
It was an Australian journalist, and the British knew that the Germans were working on the atomic bomb. So it was not just any old bomb; it was the big one. And Lewis said, “If I see that bomb heading straight for me, I’m going to stick out my tongue at it and say, ‘Poo! You’re just a bomb. I am an immortal soul!’” I love that!
Matt Tully
That’s just amazing. But it has that perspective. It’s not that death is relativized for a Christian. We understand its limits. It has a power over us, but it’s a limited power. It’s a power that will be undone in the last day. And that’s such an incredible, incredible thing for us to hold on to as we face whatever our rock bottom might be, that ultimately it will be undone by our Lord.
Ray Ortlund
I think the Lord is calling us to face not only death, but all the sufferings that lead up to it. To face our sufferings and advancing age, decrepitude, injury, and so forth—face it all with a cheerful defiance. Death will take us out, but at every step along the way, we prevail by not being intimidated and not being disheartened, but by rejoicing in Christ every step of the way. In fact, Matt, here’s how we can wake up every day by God’s grace for his glory: we’re going to go give the devil a really bad day, and we’re going to have fun doing it, and we’re going to glorify Christ. And that doesn’t mean that we’re sparkling, perfect Christians. We have many weaknesses and many failings. But even that we offer to Christ cheerfully. He is our all-sufficient Savior. Martin Luther, again, he’s taught me more than anyone else about cheerful defiance because Jesus is our all-sufficient Savior. Jesus loves and saves sinners, Matt. Let’s admit it. If we want in on Jesus, we’ve got to be, as Isaiah says, among the contrite and lowly.
Matt Tully
Ray, to close this out here, I wonder if you might consider praying for those of us who are listening, but especially for the person who maybe does find him or herself in this rock bottom spot, whatever it might be. Maybe it is that betrayal. Maybe it is their own sin, where they just feel completely trapped. Or maybe it is some kind of sickness or illness, some physical infirmity that they can’t escape. I wonder if you would pray to close us, that they would understand what Christ means to them right now.
Ray Ortlund
Thank you for that. It’s a very sensitive suggestion. So many people are suffering right now, suffering deeply. Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for being the Lord of the lowly. You dwell in a high and holy place, but also down here with us at our lowest, with us at our worst. You are not aloof. You’re not above it all. You’re not too busy for people like us. But you are down among us right here, right now. So we pray for everyone listening. Lord, give us an awareness—an existential, real-time awareness—of your nearness to us at this very moment. Your heart for us, your care for us, your presence. We are so grateful that we are not God forsaken. So grateful for your presence, your favor, your advocacy, your cross, your Spirit, your word. Now, Lord, whatever our next step is, help us to take that step right now. Give us that grace, Lord. Thank you. In Jesus’s name, Amen.
Matt Tully
Amen. Thank you, Ray, for speaking with us today.
Ray Ortlund
Oh, it’s a privilege. Thank you, Matt.
Jim Hamilton discusses what to do when you hate your job, offering encouragement for those frustrated in their work and explaining the difference between a job and a vocation.
Rosaria Butterfield encourages us to engage our LGBTQ neighbors for Christ, highlighting how God used the radically ordinary hospitality of Christians to draw her to himself.
If you’ve hit rock bottom, you know one thing for sure. It’s horrible. I know it too.
You’re not alone. Jesus is down here, and he welcomes you. His friends are down here, and we welcome you. Rock bottom isn’t where we wanted to go, obviously. But here we are. And to our amazement, rock bottom is where great things are finally starting to happen, thanks to Jesus and his gospel of grace. That’s the first thing we need to know. Down at rock bottom, we discover that hope is waiting for us—with open arms too.
Here’s the second thing we need to know. Before we can start feeling hopeful again, before we can risk getting excited about our future again, we must get closer to God. He is where hope gets traction. He is our hope. Without him, why care about anything? With him, we can face life as it is, and we will prevail. We will even laugh again.
So, our pain gets us to reach out to God with a deep urgency. We’re sure not playing churchy games anymore, are we? But we are wondering, Where do we turn now? We really need God. But where can we find him? Amazingly, God anticipates our need, our question. He tells us where he can always be found:
For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,
who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
“I dwell in the high and holy place,
and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly,
and to revive the heart of the contrite.” —Isaiah 57:15
Okay then. Now we know. God dwells in two places. He lives way up high, up in the holy place, in eternal heaven above. And he also lives way down low, among the lowly and the contrite, down with the crushed and devastated people, down at rock bottom.
The thing is, we can’t go up to his lofty dwelling place above—not while we’re still living in this world. But we can go down to his humble dwelling place below, down at rock bottom, where the lowly and the contrite are being revived by his grace in Christ. His dwelling place high above is beyond our reach. But rock bottom way down low is where we can go, and where we do go sooner or later. And God loves it down there. It’s where his grace is reviving broken people. They’re coming alive again. They’re getting excited about their future again. What a great place to be! Sign me up!
That’s how Mary, the mother of Jesus, saw it. It’s how she felt:
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty. —Luke 1:51–53
I’m guessing you’re ready to say the same.
Rock bottom is where great things are finally starting to happen, thanks to Jesus and his gospel of grace.
So let’s take our next step. Our part in all this is to accept, deeply accept, a new realization, a new reality. And it’s sobering. Here it is. That life you and I wanted to live, that life we even expected to live, that ideal “designer life” where we’d be happy and popular and well-off and in control, our careers trending well, our children getting above-average grades, and we have enough money coming in to keep trouble out—that life, that world, that social space I call “the mushy middle.” It isn’t heaven above, and it isn’t rock bottom below. It’s a culture floating around in between.
Nearly everybody wants to live there! And why not? That world, with its neighborhoods and career tracks and social events, it’s pleasant, convenient, prestigious. But there is a problem with “the mushy middle.” It’s a serious problem, though few people pay much attention. The problem is, it can be harder to find God in “the mushy middle.” Oh, he’s there all right. Of course, he’s present there. He’s present everywhere. But the clutter, the ease, the selfishness make it easier to marginalize God and harder to experience him. And the reason for our obliviousness there is downright scary. God will never agree to being used as a lifestyle enhancement for the privileged few. Never.
So “the mushy middle” looks nice. But it’s much better to be down at rock bottom. It’s where God is near—so available, his arms wide open.
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What then is happening down in the low place, where God is so wonderfully present? Two things.
One, God is “reviving” the contrite and the lowly. Isaiah’s word “revive” means to reinvigorate. It’s about exhausted people getting fresh strength, crushed people standing tall again, injured people feeling alive as never before. And what if you’re not eager to become more religious? I’m not either. But who doesn’t long for the richness and fullness of life? It’s what God gives to the contrite and lowly.
They don’t deserve God, and they know it. But through the cross of Christ, they receive God with the empty hands of faith. And he gives them all that his grace can do—forever.
Two, the contrite and lowly are also discovering one another. I include this, because “the contrite” and “the lowly” in the last two lines of Isaiah’s verse are plural nouns. Yes, God draws near to the individual: “. . . him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit.” But God also gathers the contrite and lowly together as a new community. And what a community!
The best people I’ve ever known I discovered down at rock bottom. Are they recovering from some hard things? Yes. Some really hard things. But the contrite and lowly are also relaxed, honest, open, gentle, and downright fun. They listen well. They care sincerely. They are tearful, and they are cheerful. They pray, and they work. They believe the gospel, and they confess their sins. You don’t have to wonder about them. They have your back, and you have theirs. I love it down there with those precious people! You’ll love it too.
It's a privilege to be your friend down here, where God dwells and where broken people get their lives back.
God bless you.
Warmly,
Ray
Ray Ortlund is the president of Renewal Ministries, the pastor to pastors at Immanuel Church in Nashville, and a canon theologian with the Anglican Church in North America. He is the author of several books, including Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel; The Death of Porn; and the Preaching the Word commentaries on Isaiah and Proverbs. He is also a contributor to the ESV Study Bible. Ray and his wife, Jani, have been married for fifty years.
I am seeking to obey Jesus’s last command: “Make disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19–20). Jesus’s final command was to teach all nations to keep his commandments.
Actually, the final command was more precise than that. He did not say, “Teach them all my commandments.” He said, “Teach them to observe all my commandments.” You can teach a parrot all of Jesus’s commandments. But you cannot teach a parrot to observe them. Parrots will not repent, and worship Jesus, and lay up treasures in heaven, and love their enemies, and go out like sheep in the midst of wolves to herald the kingdom of God. Teaching people to parrot all that Jesus commanded is easy.
Teaching them to observe all that Jesus commanded is impossible. Jesus used that word. When a rich man could not bring himself to let go of his riches and follow him, Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. . . . With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:25–27).
Therefore, the person who sets himself to obey Jesus’s final commission—for example, to teach a rich man to observe the command to “renounce all that he has” (Luke 14:33)—attempts the impossible. But Jesus said it was *not impossible. “All things are possible with God.” So the greatest challenge in writing this book has been to discern God’s way of making impossible obedience possible.
Jesus said that this impossible goal happens through teaching. “Make disciples . . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” There is, of course, more to it than that—like the atoning death of Jesus (Mark 10:45) and the work of the Holy Spirit (John 14:26) and prayer (Matt. 6:13). But in the end Jesus focused on teaching. I take this to mean that God has chosen to do the impossible through the teaching of all that Jesus commanded. That’s what I pray this [message] will prove to be—a kind of teaching that God will use to bring about impossible obedience to Jesus. And all of that for the glory of God.
Teaching and Obedience That Glorify God
The reason I emphasize the glory of God is because Jesus did. He said, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). The ultimate goal of Jesus’s commandments is not that we observe them by doing good works. The ultimate goal is that God be glorified. The obedience of good works is penultimate. But what is ultimate is that in our obedient lives God be displayed as the most beautiful reality in the world. That is Jesus’s ultimate goal and mine. This helps me answer the question: What kind of teaching of Jesus’s commandments might God be willing to use to bring about such impossible obedience? If the aim of obedience is ultimately the glory of God, then it is probable that the teaching God will use is the kind that keeps his glory at the center.
The ultimate goal of Jesus’s commandments is not that we observe them by doing good works. The ultimate goal is that God be glorified.
Keeping the Commandments Connected to Jesus and His Work
How then do we keep the beauty of God in proper focus in relation to Jesus’s commandments? By treating the meaning and motivation of the commands in connection with the person and work of Jesus. The person and work of Jesus are the primary means by which God has glorified himself in the world. No revelation of God’s glory is greater. Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Therefore, his person is the manifestation of the glory of God. To see him as he really is means seeing the infinitely valuable beauty of God. Jesus also said, as he was praying, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4). Therefore, his work is a manifestation of the glory of God. When we see what he achieved and how he did it, we see the majesty and greatness of God.
Therefore, my aim has been to probe the meaning and the motivation of Jesus’s commands in connection with his person and work. What emerges again and again is that what he is commanding is a life that displays the worth of his person and the effect of his work. His intention is that we not disconnect what he commands from who he is and what he has done.
We should not be surprised, then, that Jesus’s final, climactic command is that we teach all nations to observe all that he commanded. This leads to his ultimate purpose. When obedience to his commands happens, what the world sees is the fruit of Jesus’s glorious work and the worth of his glorious person. In other words, they see the glory of God. This is why Jesus came and why his mission remains until he comes.
John Piper is founder and lead teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. He served for thirty-three years as a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is the author of more than fifty books, including Desiring God; Don’t Waste Your Life; and Providence.
The Ten Commandments are part of the OT Law, but NT authors do quote or allude to the commandments quite often as being relevant for new covenant Christians (except for one).
If contentment has been a losing battle for you, if coveting comfort or cash or companions has been your common state, let the good news sink in: contentment is learned.
One catechism defines sin this way: “What is sin? Sin is rejecting or ignoring God in the world he created, not being or doing what he requires in his law.”1 Or as artist Shai Linne says, “What is sin? Sin is the breaking of God’s law plus our condition, which means from birth we all got flaws.”2
Sin is in us and comes out of us. We are born with a sin nature, and even after we become Christians, we still battle with ongoing sin. Sin appears in our affections and our actions, in what we desire and what we do, in what we seek and what we say. It consists in doing what we shouldn’t (sins of commission) and in not doing things we should (sins of omission).
Sin Is Personal (Prov. 51:4)
Sin is also personal. During the Last Supper, Peter assured Jesus that he would die for him (Luke 22:33). Jesus, however, knew that Peter would succumb to temptation and deny him three times. Over the next few hours, Peter did just that. While Jesus was being beaten and wrongly accused, Peter distanced himself from his master, and even said “I do not know him” (Luke 22:57). As soon as the rooster crowed, “the Lord turned and looked at Peter,” causing Peter to recognize his sin against a man he loved and had followed for three years (Luke 22:61). We then read that Peter “went out and wept bitterly” (Matt. 26:75; Luke 22:62).
In other words, sin doesn’t merely break an arbitrary rule. It rejects God, who is personal. It effectively says to him, “I do not love you. I will not follow you. I will not obey you” (see Ps. 78:40; Isa. 43:24; Eph. 4:30). When Jesus looked into Peter’s eyes, he suddenly felt the weight of his betrayal. He had denied the one who had only ever loved him.
Or think of that famous story about King David committing adultery with the wife of one of his soldiers and then arranging the man’s murder. The Lord sent the prophet Nathan to expose David (2 Sam. 12), and David’s subsequent prayer shows how personal sin is. He cries out to God, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Ps. 51:4). Sin is always against God, and it’s always personal.
Sin Is Painful (Prov. 22:5)
It’s also painful. God designed life in this world to be lived in line with his law. This means that the world is “rigged”—rigged to work best by obeying God. Sinning, however, brings painful consequences. In Jesus’s story of the prodigal son, for instance, a younger brother spends all his wealth on prostitutes, parties, and perversion. Maybe he has fun in the beginning, but soon enough the consequences catch up with him, and he finds himself sharing slop with swine (Luke 15:11–32).
I’m not saying that obedience always brings happiness and sin sadness. Yet the Bible teaches again and again that “the way of transgressors is hard” (Prov. 13:15 KJV) and “thorns and snares are in the way of the crooked” (Prov. 22:5). As a pastor, I’ve sat with hundreds of people who compromised with sin and suffered the consequences. As a believer who struggles with my own sin, I’ve compromised countless times to my shame. Sin promises to be sweet, but its aftertaste is always bitter.
Sin promises to be sweet, but its aftertaste is always bitter.
Sin Is Punishable (Rom. 6:23)
Sin is also punishable. My family was driving down a country road recently when one of my children exclaimed, “That’s a lot of tombstones!” As I looked, I saw an entire hillside lined with gravesites.
The picture of all the graves reminded me of God’s warning that sin would bring death. God had said to Adam, “In the day that you eat of [the forbidden tree] you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17). Or as Paul later explained, “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23).
But physical death is merely the “first death.” The second death is far worse. The book of Revelation contains a harrowing vision of the day of judgment, harrowing at least for those who do not know Jesus:
Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. . . . Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. (Rev. 20:11–15)
Sinning against God has great consequences. It separates us from relationship with him and incites his righteous, eternal wrath (Isa. 59:2; 2 Thess. 1:7–9)
Sin Is Pardonable (Isa. 55:7)
Gratefully, sin remains pardonable. Though our sin is great, God’s grace is greater (Rom. 5:20). Punishment is his “strange” work (Isa. 28:21). He doesn’t want to punish. He desires none to perish but for all to “turn, and live” (Ezek. 18:32; cf. 1 Tim. 2:4). God cried out through the prophet Isaiah,
Let the wicked forsake his way, . . .
let him return to the Lord,
that He may have compassion on him, . . .
for he will abundantly pardon. (Isa. 55:7)
In pursuit of this pardon, God loved the world and sent his Son to die for our sins and then rise again so that we could be forgiven (John 3:16). The good news offered to us is that God will not only forgive us if we turn to Christ but also empower us to fight sin (Titus 2:12–13). This means that, if we are trusting in Christ, we don’t have to be dominated by sin any longer. We can walk in freedom and joy (Gal. 5:16–17).
Notes:
The New City Catechism: 52 Questions and Answers for Our Hearts and Minds (Wheaton, IL: Crossway), q. 16 (46–47). Cf. Westminster Shorter Catechism q. 14; Westminster Larger Catechism q. 24; and Benjamin Keach’s Catechism q. 18, in The Philadelphia Confession of Faith Being the London Confession of Faith Adopted by the Baptist Association 1742, with Scripture References and Keach’s Catechism (Sterling, VA: Grace Abounding Ministries, 1977).
Shai Linne, “Atonement Q&A,” on The Atonement (Lamp Mode, 2008).
J. Garrett Kell (ThM, Dallas Theological Seminary) is a pastor at Del Ray Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia. He is the author of Pure in Heart: Sexual Sin and the Promises of God. He and his wife, Carrie, have seven children.
In ministry to someone who struggles with sexual darkness, you may get the breakthrough in another screening room, in an area that neither of you had noticed or considered to be related.
In our avoidance of sadness, we often numb ourselves to death with entertainment. Perhaps what we’re running from is not just sadness; perhaps we’re running from ourselves.
When you’re looking out into the realm of social media, it’s easy to base your theological reflection not on what Scripture emphasizes, but on what social media wants to talk about.
Our digital life can shape our theology in several ways. I think one of the most prominent ways it does is that it tends to make us think of theology through the lens of other things, like news or controversies. The whole Bible is given to us for our instruction, but it’s really easy, when you’re looking out into the realm of social media, to base your theological reflection not on what Scripture emphasizes but on what social media wants to talk about.
The internet and social media are not simply mirror reflections of what’s important. These are programs that are engineered with algorithms to bring certain topics to the forefront and marginalize other topics.
So one of the things that I do see, especially of people of my age and even in myself, is a tendency to emphasize in our theology things that have a lot of bite online, and then we don’t want to talk about other things that aren’t as viral—things that don’t have the same kind of capacity for whipping up a big response online.
And so when we bring that kind of attitude to Scripture, we can, if we’re not being careful, instrumentalize Scripture. We can make Scripture’s teaching valuable to the degree that it allows me to argue with people, or it makes the other person look wrong, or it makes my life look righteous or beautiful.
And so that’s one way that technology can shape our engagement with theology for the worse. And we just have to be mindful of that and continually prioritize what the Scriptures prioritize, regardless of what the ambient culture might be saying.
Samuel James is an associate acquisitions editor at Crossway. He is the author of Digital Liturgies, a regular newsletter on Christianity, technology, and culture. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife, Emily, and their three children.
Our work, education, relationships, and even worship are increasingly happening digitally. Our tendency is often to think of these technologies as just neutral “tools." But this is not quite right.
All of life in the digital age is presenting us with a dizzying array of possibilities for where we spend our time, how we understand who we are, and how we perceive the world around us.
Gospel fluency isn’t just about talking. It’s about listening as well. This requires love, patience, and wisdom. We need to learn to slow down and listen closely to the longings of their hearts.
I recently observed a conversation a few Christians were having with a man who has yet to come to faith in Jesus. It was amazing to me, and saddening, to watch the Christians missing the point of this man’s struggle and questions. It seemed those speaking to him were more concerned about convincing him they were right than about listening to his heart. As a result, he walked away without any good news about Jesus, becoming even more convinced that this “religion” wasn’t for him. It’s not for me either—at least, not what I saw in that conversation.
We can do better. We must do better. We’re talking about people’s souls!
And we’re representing Jesus.
Helping people come to know the love of Jesus is the most important thing there is, and Jesus’s love for us compels us to love people better. If we don’t, the good news that people need gets muffled by our religious pride.
Proverbs 20:5 says, “The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.” We need to become people of understanding—people who seek to understand others before we expect them to understand us and what we believe. We need to learn how to ask more questions and draw out what is deep inside people’s souls. We need to learn to slow down and listen closely to the longings of their hearts. We need to learn their stories. In short, we need to care more about winning people to Jesus than about winning arguments.
Gospel fluency isn’t just about talking. It’s about listening as well. This requires love, patience, and wisdom.
Drawing Out the Heart
Jesus was so good at this.
Whenever I consider how I can grow in being a person of understanding who listens well, I think of Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the well.1
It was high noon, when the sun was at its hottest. There was a reason this woman was getting her water at this time. She chose a time when no one else would be at the well. Nobody went there in the heat of the day. But she probably wanted to avoid running into one of the wives of the men with whom she had been sexually involved. She had had five husbands, and the man she was then involved with was not her husband. However, Jesus didn’t start with where she was wrong. He actually started in a humble posture of receiving from her.
He asked her for water, and she poured out her soul.
I’ve found that starting with a posture of humility, standing in a place of need and having a heart that is willing not only to give answers but also to receive insight, creates a welcoming place for people to open their hearts. The more open we are to listen and learn, the more likely people are to be open as well.
If you look at the story closely, you discover that Jesus continued to make very short, provocative statements that invited more conversation. He was drawing out, little by little, the longing of her soul.
He’s a master at drawing out the heart.
You notice this if you read the Gospels. Jesus regularly said just enough to invite further probing or create intrigue. He also loved to ask questions so that the overflow of the heart (belief) would spill out of a person’s mouth (words).
I’m amazed at how often well-intentioned Christians overwhelm people with a barrage of words. We go on and on about what we believe and what they should believe, assuming we know what others think, believe, or need. I often find that we are giving answers to questions people are not even asking or cramming information into hearts that are longing for love, not just facts.
We fail to listen. We fail to draw out the heart. And we miss opportunities to really love people and share the love of God with them. They also miss out on getting to hear what’s going on in their own hearts. I have found that when people, including myself, are invited to say out loud what they believe, they come to realize something is wrong.
Jesus slows down, draws out the heart, and listens.
One out of every two children born in the next thirty years will be born in Africa, but many won’t have access to God’s Word. Every $5 you give will provide a Bible for a child in need. Would you partner with us to support the future of the global Church? Learn More.
Talk Less, Listen More
As we are changed by the gospel, we want to share how the gospel has changed us. It’s a great thing to do so. In fact, one of the keys to growing in gospel fluency is to regularly share what Jesus has done or is doing in our lives with others. Our stories are powerful demonstrations of the gospel’s power to save.
However, if we don’t also listen, we tend to share the good news of Jesus in a way that applies primarily to our lives, the way it was good news to us, but fails to address the situations others are facing. We can become proclaimers of the good news while remaining ignorant of the ways in which others need to hear it. This doesn’t negate how good the news of Jesus is at all. However, if we read the rest of the story of Jesus’s encounter with the Samaritan woman, we find that while her testimony created intrigue, the people in the village had to meet Jesus for themselves. It wasn’t enough for her just to share her story. They had to get to Jesus as well.
So she brought them to him.
Our job is to testify to Jesus’s work in our lives while also listening closely to others so we know how to bring the truths of Jesus to bear on the longings of their hearts. We need to bring them to Jesus so he can meet their unique needs and fulfill their personal longings.
In order to do this, we have to slow down, quiet our souls, ask good questions to draw out the hearts of others, and listen.
Our stories are powerful demonstrations of the gospel’s power to save.
Francis Schaeffer said, “If I have only an hour with someone, I will spend the first fifty-five minutes asking them questions and finding out what is troubling their heart and mind, and then in the last five minutes I will share something of the truth.”2
My regular counsel to Christians these days is to spend more time listening than talking if they want to be able to share the gospel of Jesus in a way that meaningfully speaks to the hearts of others.
We were created by God to find our greatest satisfaction and fulfillment in him. Every human is hungry for God. Everyone has eternity written on their hearts, producing a longing for something—someone—better, more significant, and eternal. This is a longing for God (Eccl. 3:11). The cry of every heart— the native tongue of our souls—is for better, not for worse; for the eternal, not for the temporal; for healing, redemption, and restoration. And only Jesus can bring this about.
We all long for Jesus Christ. Everyone is seeking him, even if they don’t know it.
They are looking for something to fulfill their longings and satisfy their thirst.
However, they are looking in the wrong places. They are going to the wrong wells to try to draw soul water. They need to look to Jesus. But they will not come to see how he can quench their thirst if we don’t take the time to listen.
And as we listen, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can discern the longings of their hearts, the brokenness of their souls, and the emptiness of their spirits. And then, we must be prepared to show how Jesus can meet them at the well with soul-quenching water—himself.
Notes:
This story is from John 4.
Cited in Jerram Barrs, introduction to Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, 30th Anniversary Edition (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 2001), xviii.
Jeff Vanderstelt is a pastor, speaker, author, and founder and visionary leader of Saturate and the Soma Family of Churches. He serves as a teaching pastor and director of missional communities at Doxa Church in Bellevue, Washington. Additionally, Jeff supports church planting globally through training and as a member of the advisory board of C2C Network. He and his wife, Jayne, have three children. You can connect with Jeff at his website, JeffVanderstelt.com, or on Twitter (@JeffVanderstelt).
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
How do I present the gospel honestly and boldly without needlessly offending? How do I ensure I don’t slip into heresy by adding or subtracting from the gospel?
The Great Commission still applies to every single follower of Christ in every generation. Jesus’s command to make disciples of all nations remains just as compelling.
Every believer and every church is called to bear witness about Christ. But until motivated by the Spirit, our public witness is often weak and fickle.
What was Jesus referring to when He asked Peter in the garden of Gethsemane, “Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?” We might be prone to think that the “cup” He mentioned symbolized the physical suffering Christ would meet on the cross—but, as Alistair Begg points out in his sermon “Shall I Not Drink the Cup?,” He probably had something even more momentous in mind:
What was Jesus referring to when He asked Peter in the garden of Gethsemane, “Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?” We might be prone to think that the “cup” He mentioned symbolized the physical suffering Christ would meet on the cross—but, as Alistair Begg points out in his sermon “Shall I Not Drink the Cup?,” He probably had something even more momentous in mind:
In the agony of the garden, you remember, Jesus says, “Father, if you are willing, let this cup pass from me.” Now, the cup to which he refers is a symbol of God’s judgment. It is the cup of his wrath. You would need to just take your concordance and work on this on your own to build up a picture of this from the Old Testament. Let me cross-reference just two places—one, straightforwardly, in Psalm 75. And in the midst of that psalm, in verse 8, the psalmist says,
For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup
with foaming wine, well mixed
and he pours out from it,
and all the wicked of the earth
shall drain it down to [its] dregs
—that God, in exercising his judgment on wickedness, will pour out the cup of his wrath.
You have it elsewhere, but let me just give one other, and that would be in Isaiah and in chapter 51. And the prophet says,
So the cup that is being referenced here by Jesus is that cup. It is the cup of God’s wrath. So when we think about Jesus in the garden saying, “Father, if it is possible for this cup to pass from me,” we’ve immediately gone wrong if we think what he is saying is simply “I don’t want to have to face the ignominy of this” or “I don’t like the idea of my friends and myself being separated from me” and so on—“I am afraid of the physicality of it,” if you like. All of that may be true, but that is not the issue. Because the cup that he doesn’t want to drink is the cup poured out by the Father on all the wickedness and ungodliness of humanity. Jesus didn’t want to drink that cup. If you said, “What is Jesus’ will?” Jesus’ will was “I don’t want to drink that cup.” How do we know that? Because he said it. He said it.
Biblically speaking, masculinity is what long-term sanctification produces in Christian men and femininity what long-term sanctification produces in women.
How Do the Nonphysical Differences Between Men and Women Relate to the Physical Differences?
In C. S. Lewis’s science fiction novel Perelandra, Dr. Ransom is on the planet Venus and at one point witnesses an angelic celebration. He realizes that some of the angels seem to be masculine and some feminine. We’re told that Ransom “found that he could point to no single feature wherein the difference resided, yet it was impossible to ignore.”1 There was something unmissable and yet also indefinable about this masculinity and femininity. Some of us may relate: we know masculinity and femininity exist, we recognize them when we see them, but we struggle to put our finger on exactly what each consists of.
In his book The Meaning of Marriage, Tim Keller makes a similar point:
It is my experience that it is nearly impossible to come up with a single, detailed, and very specific set of “manly” or “womanly” characteristics that fits every temperament and culture. Rather than defining “masculinity” and “femininity” (a traditional approach) or denying and suppressing them (a secular approach), I propose that within each Christian community you watch for and appreciate the inevitable differences that will appear between male and female in your particular generation, culture, people, and place.2
This means that true, biblical masculinity and true, biblical femininity are, respectively, simply what naturally emerges when men and women grow in Christ. Biblically speaking, masculinity is what long-term sanctification produces in Christian men and femininity what long-term sanctification produces in women.
This must certainly be true; whatever else manhood and womanhood are, they can’t be less than or different from godliness in a man or a woman. We can often recognize real masculinity and femininity when we see it, even if we don’t necessarily feel able to pin such things down.
Writer and teacher Jen Wilkin suggests that our physical differences go some way to explaining our nonphysical differences. For example, she says, the greater physical size and strength of most men compared to most women significantly shapes how each sex sees the world.3 Women, she suggests, will more likely be conscious of physical vulnerability in a way that won’t generally be the case with as many men, and as a result women are more likely to be attuned to and sympathetic toward vulnerability in others.
I was recently glancing at a discussion on Facebook about transgenderism and noticed that someone—not a Christian, by all accounts—made a similar point. The issue was whether transgender women (biological males identifying as female) could fully enter into the experience of womanhood without having had to encounter the world as a biological female, and this commenter (a woman) said, “In my experience men finally ‘get it’ when they become elderly. You have no clue what it’s like to live in a world where half the population can beat you to a pulp.” Entering into older age and beginning to experience a measure of physical vulnerability can help men understand something of what many women have experienced in the course of their whole lives.
This principle—that many of the observable differences between men and women have their origins in our physical differences—makes a lot of sense. Our body, soul, and spirit are deeply connected, as we’ve seen. It would certainly make sense that our bodily encounter with the world would shape how we each instinctively think, perceive, and behave. It would also make sense that the physical commonalities we share as a biological sex lead to general and observable differences between men and women that are nevertheless not absolute and which will vary from culture to culture.
Nonphyscial Differences
Some of these differences may be reflected in biblical passages addressed specifically to men or women. We need to be careful not to read more into such texts than may be there, especially by generalizing from something that may be particular. But it strikes me that in a number of places we may be getting some indirect glimpses into what some of our nonphysical differences look like.
In his instructions to Timothy about church life in Ephesus, Paul directs the following instructions to men:
I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling. (1 Tim. 2:8)
Paul is directing this call to pray specifically to men. This is not to suggest that Paul doesn’t want the women in the church to similarly lift up holy hands in prayer. The rest of the Bible makes abundantly clear that prayer is not a privilege reserved only for men. All Christians are to be people of prayer. But for some reason Paul felt that this needed to be said to the men in particular.
It seems that Paul’s words were triggered by particular behavior he’d learned about in the Christian circles he was writing to. Among the men, prayer was either being neglected or it was being practiced alongside ongoing enmity between them. Paul’s response is clear: he wants the men to lift holy hands in prayer. The focus is not so much on the hands being lifted as on them being pure. We’ll see at a later point that the Bible shows us a range of postures that were used in prayer—we’ll need to come back and think about that. But the point here is less about the posture than the attitude.
This must certainly be true; whatever else manhood and womanhood are, they can’t be less than or different from godliness in a man or a woman.
But though there is clearly specific behavior Paul is responding to, we also see that it has wider application. Paul hints at this by saying he wants men to be praying “in every place.” This goes far beyond what the guys are up to in Ephesus; the directive extends to men everywhere (and, by implication, in every time). This is not just for them there; it is for us too.
This being so, it may reflect something more generally true of men than women. Men are generally more likely to need to hear the admonition to pray than women. It is not that women don’t need the same level of encouragement to pray—they do. The issue instead is that perhaps men, overall, are more likely to be quarrelsome—not universally (all men, without exception), absolutely (all men to the same extent, with no variation), or exclusively (only men, as if women couldn’t be quarrelsome), but generally, typically. And if this is the case, then it makes sense of what Paul is calling men to do in response. If there is a tendency for men to be quarrelsome, then calling them to be men of prayer instead is not arbitrary. Rather than wrestle one another in conflict, they are to wrestle God in prayer (like Epaphras, in Colossians 4:12). Better to have “hands raised in prayer to God, not raised in clenched fists towards one another.”4 Inasmuch as men sense this trait within them, it is something that can be channeled in a healthy way and put to spiritual use.
The same may be true of what Paul then says to women in the next verses:
Women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. (1 Tim. 2:9–10)
Again, we can assume Paul’s exhortation is prompted by particular behavior among his readers that he had become aware of. He is correcting a real issue in a real place. But (also again) the fact that this comes in a letter in which the aim is to show “how one ought to behave in the household of God” (1 Tim. 3:15), we can assume it is not only about them but has wider significance beyond Ephesus at that time. If I am correct, we might expect to see another correlation between what Paul is steering them away from and what he is steering them to. The issue seems to be ostentatious dress. Not that Paul is discouraging effort in appearance; he’s discouraging effort that is deliberately attention seeking. This tendency isn’t entirely absent among men, and again Paul is not arguing against personal grooming or taking care in one’s appearance; he is arguing against ostentation.
Surely there is significance in that Paul’s instruction is directed toward women and not toward men. Just as not only men can be quarrelsome, so too not only women can be vain about appearance. But just as it is telling that Paul directed men in particular not to be quarrelsome, it is likely telling that here it is women he directs not to be ostentatious. I think we can legitimately infer from this that ostentation might be more of an issue among women in general than among men.
And just as Paul, observing a particular trait among men, directed them to channel that trait in a more spiritually constructive direction, so too he does the same here. If there is a tendency to draw the attention of others anywhere, it’s better to draw it toward God through good works than toward self through ostentatious appearance.
These texts were both prompted by Paul’s observing and redirecting negative traits. But he observes positive traits too. Writing to the Christians in Thessalonica, Paul reminds them of how he had ministered when he had been with them in person:
We were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. (1 Thess. 2:7)
Paul often likens gospel ministry to the work of a parent. Here he specifically likens it to the work of a mother nursing small children. There was a warmth and tenderness in his ministry that brings to his mind how a mother cares for such a young child.
We mustn’t read into the maternal imagery more than is clearly there, but it is interesting that Paul should especially associate these traits with women nursing babies. He expects such care to be present among mothers. However typically they may be so, they are clearly not exclusively so, as here we find Paul himself embodying the very same qualities in his apostolic ministry.
This sort of tenderness is not uniformly going to be present in all mothers without exception, nor should men shy away from being characterized by it (or Paul would not be drawing attention to his own example of it). Gentleness, with all that it involves, is part of the fruit of the Holy Spirit that all believers are called to bear (Gal. 5:22–23). If it is true that it is more commonly found in women (or at least in nursing mothers), it is not meant to be found only there. This surely is the point. Inasmuch as there may be traits (positive and negative) that are generally true of men and women, we must not be hard and fast about it. Such traits (again, inasmuch as they exist) are not going to be characteristic of any sex absolutely, universally, or exclusively. They may be typical, but they will also be unevenly present and shared with the other sex as well. If, say, gentleness is more typical of women, it isn’t equally true of all women to the same extent. And some men are gentler than some women. This does not mean that such men are in any way lacking in their masculinity; it simply reflects that we manifest the ninefold fruit of the Holy Spirit in differing proportions, between the sexes and within them. God has not called women to bear half the fruit of the Spirit and men the other half. All of us are to be marked by all that comprises this fruit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. We celebrate these wherever we see them, and we never stigmatize any who bear some of them in surprising measure. Being more manly will never mean being less spiritual. Sam Andreades puts it this way:
Gender comes in specialties. Specialties are things we all might do sometimes, but the specialist focuses on especially doing them. We may do many things for each other that are the same, but the gender magic happens when we lean into the asymmetries. Just as, physically, both males and females need both androgen and estrogen hormones, and it is the relative amounts that differ in the sexes, so the gender distinctives are things that both men and women may be able to do, and do do, but when done as specialties to one another, they propel relationship.5
So the differences that exist are not absolute, as though the things men can do only men can do, and the things women can do no man could ever do. Yet there are some general ways in which men and women are distinct from each other while at the same time being very much alike. We are not meant to be interchangeable, so that all one can do, the other must also do in exactly the same way. It is not always helpful to compare one with another, as though we are pitted against each other in a zero-sum competition.6
As with many things, G. K. Chesterton hits the nail on the head in this short poem:
If I set the sun beside the moon,
And if I set the land beside the sea,
And if I set the town beside the country,
And if I set the man beside the woman,
I suppose some fool would talk about one being better.7
Notes:
C. S. Lewis, Perelandra (1943; repr., London: HarperCollins, 2005), 253.
Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Marriage with the Wisdom of God (New York: Dutton, 2011), 200.
Jen Wilkin, “General Session 2,” Advance 2017 conference, hosted by Acts29 US Southeast, accessed June 28, 2020, https://vimeo.com/243476316.
Angus MacLeay, Teaching 1 Timothy: From Text to Message (Ross-Shire, UK: Christian Focus, 2012), 99.
Sam Andreades, Engendered: God’s Gift of Gender Difference in Relationship (Wooster, OH: Weaver, 2015), 132; emphasis original.
See the observation by Eric Metaxas in Seven Women and the Secret of Their Greatness (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2015), xviii–xix.
G. K. Chesterton, “Comparisons,” Poetry Nook website, accessed December 1, 2020, https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/comparisons-4.
Sam Allberry is the associate pastor at Immanuel Nashville. He is the author of various books, including One with My Lord; What God Has to Say about Our Bodies; and Is God Anti-Gay?, and the cohost of the podcast You’re Not Crazy: Gospel Sanity for Young Pastors. He is a fellow at the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics.
While we should be careful not to reduce gender to cultural stereotypes, we must realize that uprooting gender from biology effectively kills it. If gender can be anything, it ends up being nothing.
What do we say to our sons and daughters who ask, “Daddy and Mommy, what does it mean to be a man or a woman?” Tell them they are made in the image of God and for union with Christ.
